


Creatures Kind and Beautiful

by Skull_Bearer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Caretaking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Eating Disorder, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:21:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22350259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skull_Bearer/pseuds/Skull_Bearer
Summary: How Nate and Tigris meet and fall in love. Pain and healing.
Relationships: Nate Brooks/Tigris
Kudos: 5





	Creatures Kind and Beautiful

Ms Ruby doesn’t even look up from leaning on the guardrail as Tigris comes up. She’s looking down into the area below, the darkened windows to the basement. Tigris is just flattening himself against the far rail to pass by her protruding behind, when she straightens and flicks her cigarette into the street. “You’re sharing.”

Tigris blinks, hugging his rucksack. “I’m sorry?”

“We got a new one in.” She pulls out a new cigarette between olive-skinned fingers and flicks out the lighter. “He’s in your room.”

A thousand responses leap to Tigris’ tongue, burning his throat with outrage. He grits his teeth and swallows them down. “I see.” He can’t help the flame that spits from his lips.

Ms Ruby gives him a flat, unimpressed look from bright, bird-black eyes. “You’re the only one not sharing.”

In the smallest room, barely large enough for his bed and desk. “I am the only one paying rent.”

“And are you going to carry on paying rent?” She looks at his bag.

Tigris grits his teeth, hands clenched so tight on his bag that the dark brown skin is paling over his knuckles. They’d checked his green card, he’d thought it was still good but they’d called in, hadn’t they? Even here, on the other side of the world, they would chase him down. He shakes his head. A jerk left, then right.

“There you go.”

“If I do not have a place to study, I won’t be able to pay again.”

Ms Ruby just shrugs, “You can study when he’s out.”

Tigris exhales the last of his anger and feels the helplessness sag inside him. Door after door slammed in his face, and he can hardly turn down this last one. “Fine.”

She watches him for a moment. “Well, go on up.” There’s a flicker on her lips, and she hides it behind her cigarette. “Who knows, you might just like him?”

Tigris doesn’t quite scoff, but it’s a close thing. He pushes the door open and goes inside.

The narrow corridors of the Rat Park feel more like a cage than ever, the walls tightening like a screw, little by little coming closer, shutting out one hope after another. Ten years ago this country had seemed like a liberation, now barely chinks of light remain, flickering through the bars.

Tigris closes his eyes, lowers his head, the long lines of his dreadlocks coiling around his face, and sighs. Then he starts up the stairs.

The rooms are still quiet, most people are out. Tigris makes his way to the end of the corridor, to the little box room that had been a janitor’s closet, when this had been a hotel.

He rests a hand on the door, brushes his hand over the wood the moment, feels the snap of anger that someone else’s hand had rested on it. His place. _His place_. His, the way like his dorms at school and university had not been; the family bedroom so far away where he could not have said how many brothers and cousins he’d shared with.

He opens the door to get it over and finished, to see how much damage has been done.

At first glance, there isn’t much. His bed is still there, his desk. A few books have been disturbed, and the sight of their bindings askew itches like ants under his skin. Tigris quickly stacks them, looking around for his unwelcome guest.

But apart from the second camp bed, shoved up against the far wall, there doesn’t appear to be anyone here.

Maybe he’d gone out? Tigris isn’t sure if he’s happy about that. Just delaying the inevitable, but maybe whoever would be hit by a car and he’d be spared.

There’s a scratching under the bed. Tigris pauses, hands still on the books. A scabby hand emerges from under the edge of the sagging mattress, a filthy hand, nails back to the quick, the sleeve tattered. Tigris stays still, watching.

The hand twitches, grips at the floorboards, and a face is gradually dragged into view. It’s just as dirty as the hand, skin reddish brown under the grime, ragged shreds of hair framing it in exhausted cockscrews. But it’s the eyes that rivet Tigris in place. Not just their strange colour, and almost yellow amber. Nor the sheer wretched terror in them, that of an animal chased too long, until it was on the verge of giving up and letting the hunters take it.

No, because Tigris had seen those eyes before.

He’d been so young, he couldn’t remember his age. Father had taken him out at night, with the men, to watch the hunt. The night had been alive with insects, drawn by the stinging lights of the search. Tigris had been crying, slapping at the endless mosquitoes, and he’d seen it.

They’d cornered the leopard in a tree. It snarled, teeth like white knives, and its eyes had glowed like molten gold in the torchlight. The men had been shouting, ready with machetes if it tried to leap, guns if it didn’t. It was trapped, cornered and doomed. They had chased it all night, and it was exhausted and bleeding.

Tigris had looked at it, and it- he could still swear- it had looked back. And for a moment it was as though those eyes had bored right through him, and seen, within him, something very like itself. And Tigris had known he was a leopard too, and if the men knew what he was, they would kill him. The leopard, so beautiful and sleek, moving like a dancer through the trees until there was nowhere left to go. The slash of its paws, the grace of each cut and bite until finally, it fell.

The machetes, bared and waiting, bloodied in triumph as the men raised them high. Such dull, ordinary men. And they had hacked apart something beautiful.

There, in Uganda, twenty years and more ago. Here, in America, now.

And now, the leopard stared at Tigris again, through the eyes of this young man.

They hadn’t found this leopard, not yet. But it had been chased, oh yes. Chased and terribly, terribly wounded. The leopard Tigris remembered had still been strong, fighting to the last. This one was- broken, dragging its shattered body over broken glass in numb endurance and the knowledge that it was going to die, but not here, not at these hands.

Tigris doesn’t try and come closer; the man is watching his every movement, and when he reaches down to pick up a book, he recoils and almost vanishes under the bed again.

Tigris sits down slowly on his bed, and looks down at the book on his lap. He hopes this leopard enjoys murder mysteries. “Death on the Nile,” he reads out loud, “by Agatha Christie.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see the man’s head slowly emerge again, the hunted eyes narrowed in helpless bewilderment.

Tigris reads. The story is so familiar Tigris can look up and recite it from memory, watching the man under the bed. At first he doesn’t move, then as the story winds on from England to Egypt, a hand comes out again. Then a head. A neck, with weeping sores along the backbone. Then the collar of a coat five sizes too large, holes at the shoulders and elbows. Inch by inch; he’s thin, but tall, and it takes a dozen pages for the flapping soles to finally emerge.

The man hugs his knees. He’s wearing a dozen layers of filthy, rotting clothes that look like he’s scavenged them from the trash, and probably hasn’t removed since. There’s still fear in that dirt-smeared face, under the scraggy rags of a beard, but there’s more beneath it, something lost and desperate that hasn’t seen daylight in so long. Tigris smiles, and stands up.

It takes a few more pages before the man stands too, and even that is an event, each joint slowly unfolding until the head reaches almost to Tigris’s chin. The man wavers, as though too used to walking as a beast, but Tigris doesn’t dare steadying him. He waits until he gets his feet under himself, and opens the door.

The man recoils a little, but doesn’t go back under the bed. Tigris walks outside the door and leans against the far wall, still reading.

_“Linnet Doye had shrunk back against the rock with a little cry. Simon’s good-looking face was suddenly convulsed with rage. He moved forward as thought he would have liked to strike the slim girlish figure.”_

The man is very slim, but not very girlish; the lean lines of his body just visible under the layers of decaying clothes. Something that had been half asleep inside Tigris stirs, but he shoves it back down. _No. Maybe not yet, but no._

_“With a quick birdlike turn of her head she signaled her realization of a stranger’s presence.”_

And yes, not a leopard after all, not quite. Still wild, still beautiful but yes- a bird. He can see in the delicate bones of his face and wrist, the darting brightness of those amber eyes. Tigris walks slowly down the corridor, reading, one page for every step. And slowly, slowly, the man follows him.

He’s slumping forwards now, shoulders dragged down by the weight of his clothes, back bowing under the weight of something far heavier. Tigris waits at the door to the communal bathroom and checks inside; good, no one here.

He holds the door open. The man steps up and looks inside. His eyes wander over the stained sink, the bathtub with the shower hanging loosely above, the toilet with the seat hanging half off. He looks at Tigris and there’s something pleading there. For safety, Tigris can see it now. _Please, let this be safe. Please, keep me safe._

Tigris nods, and after the man shuffles in, he closes the door, leaving only a crack open so he can continue to read.

_“On the palm was a small pearl-handled pistol, a dainty toy it looked. “Nice little thing, isn’t it?” She said.”_

Anders from across the hall is shuffling down the hall, looking pasty and exhausted, he’s been crying again. Tigris catches his red, damp eye, and pauses in his reading. “Can you get me a set of clothes from the spares box?” He nods at the bathroom door in explanation.

Anders looks wearily at Tigris, then shrugs and turns back down the corridor. Behind the door, the sounds have stopped, and Tigris can almost taste the fear from inside. “It’s okay.” Tigris whispers through the crack. “There is no danger. “’ _Looks too foolish to be real, but it is real! One of those bullets would kill a man or woman. And I’m a good shot.’”_

He worries talking about shooting might frighten the man further, but maybe he finds it protective, because soon afterwards, the sounds of undressing continue. By the time Anders comes back with a battered but clean pair of sweatpants, underwear and a t-shirt, the shower is on and the hot water pipes are rattling. Tigris nods his thanks and slips the clothes through the crack, and raises his voice over the sound of the water.

_“’I feel sorry for her. You can suffer so much when you are young and sensitive. I think she is suffering?’”_

You are suffering. Who hurt you? It doesn’t matter. I don’t have a gun, but I’ll shoot them for you, certainly. I was too young to save the leopard, but I’ll save you, bright bird.

At last, the door opens, and the man steps out. He’s tentative in the clean clothes, his hair damp and curling in a loose afro around his face. His clean skin is a deep, reddish copper, and without the pathetic beard, he looks terrifyingly young. No more than twenty-two or twenty-three, surely.

The fear is gone, at least for now. Now, there’s nothing but weariness left. Tigris meets his eyes, and closes the book. Holds out a hand, and the man takes it. His hands are long and delicate, the knuckles just a little too large for the fine skin, sharp as bullets. He follows Tigris back to their room without protest, almost sleepwalking by the time Tigris opens the door.

Tigris takes one look at the ancient camp bed, and dismisses it in the same moment. He walks to the foot of his bed, barring the way further into the room.

The man steps forwards inside, looks from Tigris, to Tigris’ bed. Tigris nods, and waves him over.

The man gives him one last glance, an exhausted _you sure?_ and when Tigris nods again, he folds himself up on it, curling up against the wall, making himself as small as possible.

He’s thin enough that he hardly takes up much space. Tigris teases the bedclothes out from under him, and pulls them over the narrow, shivering shoulders. Then he sits down with his back against the headboard, and opens the book again. “Do you like the story?”

A pause, then a brief nod. “As do I. Would you like me to continue?”

Another, slightly larger nod.

The murder has been committed, and Poirot is on the case. The man’s eyes are starting to droop, and Tigris pauses, digging out a water bottle and taking a drink.

“Who did it?” The voice almost makes him spill the water. The man is propping himself up on his elbow, hair hanging in cockscrews and drying at strange angles. There’s a sweet and weary smile on his lips.

“Who do you think did it?” Tigris hands him the bottle. The man takes it and sips.

“Not sure. I think it’s the husband, but I don’t know how.”

“Why don’t we find out together?”

“Yeah.”

Tigris has settled in beside him, and found their place, when- “I’m Nathaniel.”

Tigris pauses. “Nathaniel?”

“Yeah. Nate Brooks.”

Nathaniel. ‘Nate’ he discards immediately, because- Nathaniel. Na-tha-niel. A mouths each syllable, tasting it on his tongue, it melts like sugar, like dark chocolate.

He smiles. “My name is Tigris.”

“Tigris?”

“Yes.”

He’s not sure, but he thinks he sees Nathaniel repeating his name to himself, over and over, seeing how it feels on his tongue, as though rehearsing it, trying to get it just right.

And something in Tigris hopes they will have a long, long time to practice.


End file.
